cfinput regular expression validation not working

validate="regex" uses Javascript.  Does your browser have Javascript enabled?  Of course any Javascript validation can be got round, so you'd also have to do server-side validation too.

Also regex validation only works on HTML forms, not on Flash forms.

You could change the type from regex to time, although I think that expects format of hh:mm:ss.

Alternatively instead of doing a regex, you could use the mask attribute, something like mask="99:99".

yes but the problem is i have people using incorrect times like hour 24:35 it doesn't exist.  so it causes database issues.  tried with firefox, Chrome, IE7

right, so that's a different problem from originally reported.  If you want to check the time is actually valid, use
IsValid("time", form.fieldname)

ok the problem is i can't get regular expression to validate anything

Im ean I ty pe in ^$ and I can type anything I want into the balnk and it takes it

storeytime,

I assume you are using format="html".  In which case using validate="time" would work fine for your purposes - because you are using maxlength="5".  As long as javascript is enabled, the attached works correctly.   BUT, users can easily disable javascript. So in addition, you should also use server side validation on the action page, as Ducan suggests.

Also, with date and times you should use cfqueryparam or CreateDateTime to ensure the values are properly formatted before being sent to the database.

<cfform format="html">
	<cfinput type="text" name="NOTIFIED" size="5" maxlength="5" 
			validate="time" message= "wrong time">
	<cfinput type="submit" name="submitButton">
</cfform>

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> ok the problem is i can't get regular expression to validate anything

Probably because the validate value should be "regular_expression", not "regex"

<cfform format="html">
	<cfinput type="text" name="onlyNumbers" required="yes" validate="regular_expression"
			pattern="[0-5]" 
			message="Only numbers 1 through 5 are allowed!">
	
	<cfinput type="submit" name="submitButton">
</cfform>

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> Probably because the validate value should be "regular_expression", not "regex"

Oops. My mistake.  They changed it to allow both "regex" and "regular_expression".  If the above code does not work for you, then you should check whether _any_ cfform validation works.  For example, if a simple required="true" does not work:

<cfinput type="text" name="firstName" required="yes" message="First Name is required!">

... either javascript is disabled -or- there is a problem with the CFIDE directory/mapping (where the validation scripts are located).  

if you force onserver then the user readable message is not displayed using the message=" yada" parameter.  is there a way to display a user readable message or are you stuck with try formatting ^/A/d/d/d/d?/d$ for the message

Whatever message you define is displayed if you use validate="time".  Apparently, it is not displayed for validate="reg_ex".  

you can use validateat="when to validate" to set one or multiple times to validate i know you get a little pop up window with javascript execution of the message statement but when javascript is disabled and you also force onserver then you do not get the message you get format not correct must be and then gives regular expression which to the end user is very cryptic